by John Lutz
The breakfast rush was falling off, so there was space at the counter and empty booths. Repetto took his time with the paper, then left Carrie the usual tip and paid the cashier on the way out.
It was a great morning. The sky was clear and the air had been cleansed by last night’s rain. Repetto decided to stroll around for a while before returning to the house. Then he’d . . .
What?
What would he do?
How would he occupy his time?
He felt suddenly alone. Lost and without purpose. He noticed that his mouth was dry and he felt slightly unsteady.
Some kind of retirement panic, he told himself. Not to worry. There was plenty to do that was unconnected to police work. He grinned to reassure himself. Other people retired and found ways to spend their time. So could he.
So would he.
Melbourne was about to leave his office when his assistant, Lieutenant Mike Mathers, knocked twice, then opened the door. There was excitement on his flushed, Irish face.
“For you on line two, sir. It’s him.”
Melbourne didn’t have to ask who. He sat back down behind his desk, taking as much time as he dared before picking up the receiver. Not that it would help; this killer was aware that the police were tracing his call and knew exactly how long it was safe to stay on the line.
When it was time, Melbourne lifted the receiver and identified himself.
“You know who this is?” came the answering voice. Neutral, sexless, perhaps filtered through something that might disguise it.
“I know. What do you want this fine morning?”
“What did he say?”
“He?”
“Don’t play tricks to try keeping me on the line. That might cost somebody their life, and that would be on your conscience.”
“He said no.”
A laugh, as cold and neutral as the voice. “He’ll change his mind. I know him. Know about him. Captain Vincent Repetto. Hero and legend. Know him as well as I know myself.”
“I’d say there’s a lot of difference between you two.”
“Only the twists and turns of fate.”
“Hardly. I know Vin Repetto.”
“But you don’t know me.”
“So tell me about yourself.”
“I’ll tell you what I want, who I want, and that’s Captain Vincent Repetto. The only worthy opponent in your entire incompetent bureaucracy.”
“He’s no longer part of the bureaucracy.”
“He can be again.”
“I told you, I asked him. He said no.”
“Then ask him again. Be persuasive. Give him the third degree. I’ll accept no one other than Repetto.”
“The choice isn’t yours to make.”
“But it is, and I’ve made it.”
“Listen—”
“Better think of some way to give me what I demand, and soon. I’m patient, but I won’t wait forever.”
Click. Buzzzzzzzzz.
Melbourne replaced the receiver and looked at his watch. He knew the killer had cut the connection soon enough.
Mathers stuck his head back in the office. “The call was from a cell phone, sir.”
“Sure,” Melbourne said, knowing that if the phone were ever found, it would turn out to be stolen and wiped clean of prints. “We record the call okay?”
“You betcha.”
Instead of leaving his office, Melbourne sat behind his desk for a long time, thinking of ways to be persuasive.
4
At ten the next morning, Repetto was seated at his desk cleaning his father’s old .38 police special revolver, when the doorbell rang.
Lora was upstairs selecting paint samples to show a client. Usually she didn’t hear the doorbell there. Repetto put down the container of bluing he was holding and wiped his hand on the rag the gun had been wrapped in, then made his way to the front door and peered through the peephole.
A tall woman with long red hair stood on the concrete stoop. Repetto opened the door to get a less distorted look at her.
Since it was a sunny April morning, she wasn’t wearing a coat. She had a good figure beneath a brown blazer with a matching skirt. Her face was angular, her eyes green and pink-rimmed beneath strands of hair the breeze had laid across her face. She appeared to have been crying, but he suspected her eyes were always like that, in the manner of some redheads. Her makeup was sparse but it was there, pale lipstick, paler green eye shadow. Repetto guessed her age at about forty.
She smiled. Straight teeth, nice smile. She said, “Only an ex-homicide detective could size up a woman like that.”
Repetto grinned, embarrassed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. It wasn’t . . .”
“Lascivious?”
“No. I mean, yes, it wasn’t.”
“So what did you decide about me?” She cocked her head to one side as she asked the question, almost the way Lora did.
“We haven’t met,” Repetto said. “You’re educated—that word lascivious—and well enough off financially but not wealthy.”
She raised her eyebrows. There wouldn’t have been much to them were it not for eyebrow pencil.
“Your clothes,” Repetto explained. “A good cop can judge clothes like a fashion expert, at least when it comes to price. Yours are in good taste, and medium-priced except for your shoes. They’re expensive.”
“You can’t be too kind to your feet,” the woman said.
“You’ve got a job, maybe a profession, that pays you well enough. You’re unmarried.” He saw her glance at her ringless left hand. “You’re well adjusted and reasonably happy, ambitious, and you want something.”
She smiled. “What makes you think I want something?”
“You’ve managed to stir my interest and keep me talking while you’re sizing me up.”
“You can learn a lot about people from what they think about you,” she said.
“If they’re honest.”
“A former NYPD detective would be honest.”
“Different kind of honest,” Repetto said.
She seemed to think that over but didn’t say anything.
“You don’t strike me as the type who’s selling something, so what do you want?” he asked.
“My name’s Zoe Brady,” she said.
“I wondered when we’d get around to that. You obviously know things about me, including my name, I’m sure.”
“You’re Vincent Repetto. The legendary Repetto. Tough cop and true. Smart and every kind of honest.”
“Now I know you want something.”
“I’m a profiler in the NYPD,” Zoe said.
“And I know what you want.” Repetto stepped outside and closed the door behind him; it wouldn’t do for Lora to hear any of this. “Lou Melbourne sent you.”
“He okayed it. Coming here was my idea.”
“Whoever came up with the idea, it wasn’t a good one. I’m not going to change my mind about the sniper.”
“The thing is,” Zoe said, “he’s not going to change his mind about you. I’ve worked to get inside this guy’s head, and I’ve got some small idea of how he reasons—or thinks he reasons. He’s not going to give up on something he wants, and he wants you to engage in a contest with him.”
“He isn’t going to get what he wants.”
“Well, we want it too. Because we know how dangerous the sniper is. And we understand why he wants you as his nemesis. You’re legendary, and in his mind, he soon will be.” She stared earnestly at Repetto. “Have you at least given the matter any thought since Captain Melbourne talked with you?”
“I have,” he said. “I haven’t changed my mind. The game this sicko wants is one I’m finished playing.” He smiled at her. There was something he liked about her despite her mission, despite the fact she wasn’t really a cop. If only he didn’t have to get professionally involved with her. He’d never been crazy about profilers. In his experience they were more often wrong than right. And when they were right, it was
about the obvious—male, certain age bracket, poor or unemployed, tough childhood ... “I’m sorry, Zoe, but I’m not subject to threats from a psychotic killer. Next time the sniper contacts you, tell him I said no, I don’t want to play.”
She shrugged. “Okay, I tried and failed. The AC was right about you. You’re a hard man.”
“Was I just insulted?”
She backed down the steps gracefully and grinned up at him. “Not by me. I like hard and proud. That way I know where I stand.”
“You’ll tell Melbourne what I said?”
“I’ll tell him.” She nodded to Repetto, then started to stride down the sidewalk. After a few steps, she stopped and turned. “I’ll also tell him that the way I size you up, I don’t think you’re likely to change your mind.”
“You’ve got me profiled.”
“Sure. You’re a cinch.”
Repetto smiled at her, nodded good-bye, then opened the door and went back inside to his wife and his new life and his father’s gun.
5
Jim Lu had a talent given by his ancestors. Even as a child in Dom Ning he could sketch likenesses of anything, but especially of people. He had never attended school beyond his basic education in China, and never had the benefit of an art class. But what he saw, he could draw. He could look into it, understand it, see what made it what it was; then he could recreate it.
He and a dozen others made their livings as sketch artists, working mostly in Times Square after the theater curtains dropped and people spilled out into the streets to walk to subway stops or their hotels or futilely wave for taxis. For twenty dollars Jim Lu or his fellow sketch artists would provide a charcoal likeness of any person who would pose for ten minutes. For an additional fifteen dollars they would provide a sturdy cardboard frame. This was illegal, of course, but when the police chased them they would simply open shop on some other busy corner, often just across the street. There was much for the police to tend to in the theater district when it was jammed with people, and simple sketch artists moved them only to cursory efforts.
This woman—Betty Ern was her name, and Jim Lu had elicited from her that she was from Iowa—was quite easy to capture in charcoal. She had thick black hair and dark eyes, and a receding chin that Jim Lu would give definition. He knew how to flatter his subjects, removing a few years here, adding cheekbone or eye width there, and still they would look like themselves.
He sat on his wooden folding chair before his easel, his back to the traffic, facing pedestrians streaming past beyond those who’d decided to pose or simply to observe. Jim Lu began with the left eye, as he always did, working carefully and slowly. Once he had Betty’s left eye perfectly, her brow and the side of her nose, he would work faster, enlarging, keying off the eye. Every living thing he drew, he began with its left eye. He thought sometimes that the soul must live there.
Betty Ern seemed a nice enough lady. Every twenty seconds or so she’d become embarrassed by his quick, appraising glances, and a smile would sneak onto her face. Her husband or boyfriend, a large man in a gray suit, stood off to the side and watched, trying not to seem too impatient to be going.
Jim Lu ignored the man, ignored the traffic teeming noisily behind him on Broadway, ignored the mass of humanity flowing along the sidewalk before him. Gray Suit edged toward the curb so he could see what Jim Lu was doing, then grinned at Betty.
“Not much there yet,” he said, “but what there is sure looks like you.”
Jim Lu smiled and nodded at the compliment he’d barely heard in his deep concentration.
Yet a part of his mind thought of Michelle, as it had more and more often lately. Michelle who so liked to give and receive oral sex. When he was finished here—
A pain erupted in his back, then in his chest and arms. His head must have jerked backward because he was staring up through the haze of light at faint stars that became fainter ...
Betty Ern heard the loud, echoing crack! and thought at first something had fallen from a building. But the artist, the little man with the neat dark beard and mustache, had slumped from his chair and crashed to the sidewalk with his easel. Betty stared numbly down at him, at the sketch paper on the pavement, at her single left eye staring back at her. Only her eye, but she knew it was her own.
She noticed specks of blood on it, around it.
Someone or something slapped her hard, high in the chest, just beneath her throat. She heard another of the loud, reverberating cracks and was aware that she’d fallen backward, aware of people surrounding her, arms supporting her upper body, screams off in the distance. Where am I? What happened? She tried to inhale but couldn’t, and the pain and panic carried her to cold dark spaces. Her last coherent thought was of the loud, reverberating noise she’d heard, like the screen door slamming on the farm where she grew up. It was a sound she’d loved. As a girl she always slammed the door going out ... coming home.
The next morning he read the front page of the New York Post and smiled. It hadn’t taken the media long to decide what to call him: “The Night Sniper.” That was fine. Nights were most convenient for him. And since the media were giving him the night, he accepted.
The Night Sniper. Crisp and descriptive.
It would make wonderful headlines.
Repetto sat staring at the Times in the Bonaire Diner when Carrie placed his eggs, toast, and coffee before him.
“Hell of a thing last night in Times Square,” she said. “Must be a nut, this Night Sniper. World’s full of nuts, don’t you think?”
“Except for thee and me,” Repetto said, moving the folded newspaper aside to make room for his plate.
“Two people shot to death, and three injured in a traffic accident when all the cars tried to get outta there, bunch of people damn near trampled to death when they realized they were being shot at.” She topped off his coffee. “Musta been bedlam.”
“New York,” Repetto said sadly.
“Whatza difference?”
“People in Bedlam are certified insane.”
As he began to eat, he stole glances at the paper. A sketch artist and a tourist from Iowa, both dead. A teenage girl in a limo killed when a cab collided with it near the shooting. More injuries from traffic accidents. A child almost trampled to death on the sidewalk.
Repetto felt an anger growing in him that supplanted his appetite.
It didn’t help when his cell phone chirped.
He dug the phone from the pocket of his jacket folded on the seat beside him. “Repetto,” he said, swallowing a bite of egg.
“It’s Lou Melbourne here.”
“It’s breakfast here.”
“I figured that’s where you’d be. Don’t you usually read the paper while you’re abusing your arteries?”
“I was doing just that. Front page. Times Square last night.”
“The Night Sniper phoned us last night after it happened, Vin. I gave him your answer. He didn’t like it.”
Repetto knew where Melbourne was going with the conversation. “It isn’t my fault those two people were shot last night. It’s entirely the fault of the asshole who squeezed the trigger.”
“Sure. But does he see it that way?”
“He’s insane,” Repetto pointed out. “We don’t know how he sees it, and it might not make sense to us if we did know.”
“You’re the expert with serial killers, Vin, but we both know they follow their own weird logic. It’s why they kill. It’s why they get caught.”
Repetto sipped coffee. “I’m not personally responsible for any of that.”
“We agree. But folks in the mayor’s office are in a tizzy. So’s the commissioner, and so’s the chief of department, my boss.”
“You don’t sound in a tizzy.”
“It’s my job not to, but I’m all tizzied up inside. Two people shot to death; then the killer called and said you had a few days to think over my offer—his offer, really—then he’d kill two more. He said for me to tell you their deaths would be on
your conscience.”
“Anything else he tell you?”
“He said he had plenty of bullets.”
Repetto said nothing. He sipped his coffee. He didn’t like the way his heartbeat had picked up. The way his blood was racing. The cold rage in the core of him.
“I can hire you as an official consultant and give you two good detectives full-time until the Sniper is nailed,” Melbourne said. “You won’t be officially out of retirement, so you can still draw your pension and keep your promise to Lora.”
“Isn’t that a difference without a distinction?”
“That’s the kind of bullshit we hear every day in court, Vin, and it floats there but not here. You do this thing for us, for the city, and you won’t be bothered again. Travel, go to all the Broadway shows you want, eat well, drink well, rot the rest of your life away happy. That’s fine. But we both know before God, you’re the only one who can do this thing.”
“Lou—”
“Okay, the one who can do it best.”
“Lou—”
“Do this for me as an old friend. Ask Lora again. After last night, things have changed. She’ll see that, I’m sure.”
“Did the chief ask you to call me?”
“The mayor asked.”
Repetto didn’t know whether to believe him. Melbourne could be deceptive, relentless, and remarkably persuasive. That was why he’d been promoted over so many cops with more seniority. Why he’d be chief of department someday, and possibly even commissioner if he didn’t stumble over his own ambition like so many before him. Melbourne wouldn’t lie to Repetto directly, because he was too wily to have to lie, but he could massage the truth until it sighed and surrendered to him.
The bare facts were out there. The Night Sniper had killed twice because he didn’t like Repetto’s answer. If Repetto didn’t change his answer, two more people would die, and soon. Maybe he’d kill more people anyway, but those two, like the two last night, would be Repetto’s responsibility. That was the way the Night Sniper thought.